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Cory Doctorow
Cory Doctorow  ·  4 months ago

Long thread/2

A centaur is someone whose work is supercharged by automation: you are a human head atop the tireless body of a machine that lets you get more done than you could ever do on your own.

A *reverse*-centaur is someone who is harnessed to the machine, reduced to a mere peripheral for a cruelly tireless robotic overlord that directs you to do the work that it can't, at a robotic pace, until your body and mind are smashed.

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Cory Doctorow
Cory Doctorow  ·  4 months ago

Long thread/3

Bosses love being centaurs. While workplace monitoring is as old as Taylorism - the "scientific management" of the previous century that saw labcoated frauds dictating the fine movements of working people in a kabuki of "efficiency" - the lockdowns saw an explosion of bossware, the digital tools that let bosses monitor employees to a degree and at a scale that far outstrips the capacity of any unassisted human being.

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Cory Doctorow
Cory Doctorow  ·  4 months ago

Long thread/4

Armed with bossware, your boss becomes a centaur, able to monitor you down to your keystrokes, the movements of your eyes, even the ambient sound around you. It was this technology that transformed "work from home" into "live at work." But bossware doesn't just let your boss spy on you - it lets your boss *control* you. \

It turns you into a reverse-centaur.

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Cory Doctorow
Cory Doctorow  ·  4 months ago

Long thread/5

"Data At Work" is a research project from Cracked Labs that dives deep into the use of surveillance and control technology in a variety of workplaces - including workers' own cars and homes:

https://crackedlabs.org/en/data-work

It consists of a series of papers that take deep dives into different vendors' bossware products, exploring how they are advertised, how they are used, and (crucially) how they make workers feel.

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Cory Doctorow
Cory Doctorow  ·  4 months ago

Long thread/6

There are also sections on how these interact with EU labor laws (the project is underwritten by the Austrian Arbeiterkammer), with the occasional aside about how weak US labor laws are.

The latest report in the series comes from @wchr, digging into Microsoft's "Dynamics 365," a suite of mobile apps designed to exert control over "field workers" - repair technicians, security guards, cleaners, and home help for ill, elderly and disabled people:

https://crackedlabs.org/dl/CrackedLabs_Christl_MobileWork.pdf

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